The Federal Reserve’s “beige book” report, out Wednesday, offers a snapshot of economic activity across the country in recent weeks based on anecdotes gathered from the central bank’s 12 districts from late May through early July. Despite its bland title, there are often lots of interesting nuggets tucked within.

Here are excerpts:

THE YOUNG ARE MISSING: According to contacts in the Boston area, hiring in both Portland and Hartford — and hence added office demand — is held back by a scarcity of young, educated workers in these cities.

A TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW: With more Broadway shows running in New York City through the early summer than in a number of years, revenues and especially attendance at Broadway theaters strengthened further in late May and June. Read More »

A multiyear run-up in the value of farmland in the U.S. Midwest may be running out of steam, according to the Federal Reserve.

Agricultural bankers expect average cropland prices across the Farm Belt to slide as 2014 approaches because big harvests this fall have driven grain and soybean prices sharply lower, according to separate reports released Friday by the regional Fed banks in St. Louis and Kansas City.

“[B]ankers expect a further erosion in District quality farmland values over the next three months,” St. Louis Fed analysts wrote in their report, which identified a 6% decline in farmland values in the third quarter from the second quarter for their region, which includes parts of the Midwest and Southeast. Read More »

Lower farm earnings were a drag on U.S. incomes in the second quarter of the year, hitting plains states particularly hard.

Nationwide, average incomes grew a very modest 1.0% from April to June after falling 1.3% in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Monday. The partial rebound helped households boost spending and supported the economy across much of the country.

But the report also shows sharp regional variations.

Sunbelt states Florida and Arizona saw the strongest growth in incomes at 1.5%. Florida may be benefiting from an improving real estate market — property income accounted for more than half of the state’s second quarter personal income growth. Read More »

On Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture said it expects net farm income this year to reach $120.6 billion, a jump of 6% from 2012 and the second highest since 1973 on an inflation-adjusted basis.

But the robust outlook comes with a caveat. Federal forecasters in their last outlook back in February predicted an even stronger 2013. Tuesday’s projection for net farm income was a more than 6% decline from that earlier forecast.

Driving the cut is a pullback in commodity prices much of the year as expectations built for a bumper crop this fall. While farmers will benefit from the large volumes, they’ll also be hit by lower prices. The USDA estimates corn will average $5.85 a bushel in 2013, down nearly a dollar from last year’s average. Still, that’s not low according to recent history, with corn prices averaging $3.88 in 2010.

The farm economy showed signs of slowing in parts of the U.S. during the second quarter, even as agricultural-land values continued to climb, according to new Federal Reserve reports.

Regional bankers in a quarterly survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said farm incomes fell in the second quarter and declines are expected in the third quarter, too, amid sharp declines in the prices of crops such as corn and soybeans from record highs a year ago.

A separate survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found bankers expect a pullback in farm incomes in the third quarter after a modest increase in the second quarter.

Farmland prices, which have risen rapidly in recent years amid historically high crop prices, continued to increase in the latest three-month period. Read More »

–Retirement:Lydia Saad looks at Gallup data on retirement plans. “Three-quarters of U.S. adult workers believe they will continue working past retirement age, with 40% saying they will do so because they want to, and 35% because they will have to. A much smaller percentage — 19% — fit the prototypical retirement scenario of someone who plans to stop working at retirement age by choice… “Retirement” once connoted a lifestyle free from the demands of work, but also reliance on personal savings and Social Security. Both of those impressions may change if Americans carry through on their intent to continue working, at least part time, after reaching retirement age. While this could be a disappointment to some retirees, it could have benefits both socially and health-wise for Americans, if staying in the workforce keeps seniors more physically and mentally active than they would be otherwise. It would clearly help them financially, particularly if the alternative is dependency on inadequate retirement savings and an uncertain Social Security system. This, in turn, could benefit the economy, with seniors contributing experienced labor as well as earning income that fuels consumer spending and, therefore, the economy as a whole.”

–Farm Subsidies: Bloomberg View calls for an end to farm subsidies. “The deal in December to avert the so-called fiscal cliff had one welcome consequence: It derailed a new farm bill, the $100 billion annual spending package that’s renewed every five years and filled with subsidies for some of the U.S.’s most prosperous businesses. To keep the money flowing to farmers, as well as to food-stamp recipients, the 2008 bill was extended until this September, allowing Congress time to come up with a bill that would cut unnecessary handouts to farmers while preserving safety-net programs. Instead, Congress is poised to make ill-advised cuts and dole out fresh largess to farmers who don’t need it. That’s shameful, especially because President Barack Obama provided a good starting point in his proposed budget. It called for trimming spending by almost $38 billion during the next 10 years by eliminating the $5 billion in annual direct payments to owners of farmland and reducing subsidies for crop insurance.” Read More »

Farmland values in parts of the U.S. Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains continued to rise in the first quarter, but at a more moderate pace, as higher costs and falling commodity prices slowed growth in farm incomes, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said Wednesday.

The value of non-irrigated farmland rose 19% above year-earlier levels, with the biggest increase coming in portions of Missouri, the bank said in a quarterly report. That put the bank’s farmland survey at record levels for the first quarter as a boom in farmland prices continued, fueled in recent years by low interest rates and a record run-up in commodity prices.

But even as values climbed, bank officials said the pace of the gains eased. In the district, which stretches from western Missouri to Wyoming, farmland values rose 3.4% in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of 2012. Values rose by 7.7% during the same period a year earlier.

The White House today released the Economic Report of the President, a 456-page tome that chronicles the major forces driving the U.S. economy. The report compiled by the White House Council of Economic Advisers dives deep into both short-term factors and long-term trends influencing the economy’s path. In case you had plans for the weekend that don’t include reading the report, we picked out 10 key topics with our questions and the CEA’s answers. All charts are from the report.

1) Is the bleeding by state and local governments over?Perhaps, thanks to the housing market.

The trend: “Although State and local governments continued to experience fiscal pressure in 2012, the long contraction in the sector finally appears to be coming to an end. State and local consumption and investment (purchases) have shown unprecedented weakness compared with previous recoveries. From the end of the recession in mid-2009 to the fourth quarter of 2012, real State and local purchases declined 6.8 percent. By contrast, during the comparable period of each of the six previous recoveries, real State and local purchases posted positive growth, averaging an increase of 10.3 percent over the first three and a half years of the recovery.”

The slow rebound: “Current State and local government expenditures—which include transfers to individuals as well as government consumption—rose 2.8 percent over the four quarters of 2012, following a 0.2 percent increase in the previous year. A recent CBO report noted that the weakness in State and local government spending relative to previous recoveries could be attributed roughly equally to three different areas: hiring of employees, purchases of goods and services, and construction spending. Despite continued spending restraint across these major components, the operating position of State and local governments deteriorated to an aggregate deficit of $140 billion by the third quarter of 2012, on pace for a fifth consecutive year of operating deficits for the sector.” Read More »

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